


It Got Lost (When You Gave It Up)

by ladyhoneydarlinglove



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Legacy, Pre-Recall, mentions of past Reaper76
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:29:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9432857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyhoneydarlinglove/pseuds/ladyhoneydarlinglove
Summary: Ana awakens after her accident to find the man she loves, and a decision.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Several sources tell me "malak" means angel in arabic, but I don't trust the internet so if I'm wrong, please let me know!

Ana wakes with a cry trapped in her throat from a nightmare. 

Her comrades dead, Amelie in the sights of her scope, skin deathly blue and eyes filled with so much anger, and yet Ana couldn’t shoot. She hesitated, and it cost her dearly, and it wasn’t really a dream, was it? She feels pain radiating from her right eye, cloaked in darkness because she couldn’t do it, she couldn’t shoot, and now—

She whimpers, tears welling up in her left eye, breath trapped in her lungs. She tries to look around, but her blurred vision ensures she can only make out the vaguest of shapes. A scream starts to bubble up in her throat, but it stops as she hears something in the room move, and then a hand cups her cheek, calloused and warm. “Ana,” a gruff voice says. “Shh. You’re safe,  _ querida _ . I’m here.”

“ _ Malak _ ,” she sobs, all her trapped breath leaving in a shaky exhale. She turns into the hand on her cheek, letting the warmth soak into her skin as she tries to steady her breathing, the faint, familiar smell of Turkish tobacco Gabriel uses for his hand rolled cigarettes a balm to her frazzled nerves. “Any chance you’ll give me a cigarette?” she asks weakly, only half joking.

“No,” Gabriel answers bluntly. “You shouldn’t be smoking right now.”

She tries to laugh, but it comes out as more of strangled sob, and Gabriel shushes her once more, leaning down to press his lips against her temple. Ana forces herself to breathe deeply, inhaling the comforting smell of his tobacco, years of discipline quickly bringing her down from her panic. The vision in her left eye clears as her tears dry up, and her breathing calms, bringing her rapidly beating heart back to its normal rhythm. Gabriel moves back, his face coming into clearer focus as he does; his brow set in its near perpetual furrow, but eyes brimming with concern. “How do you feel?” he asks, tone soft, caring. Hearing him speak so makes her heart swell and break in the same moment.

“Like shit,” she answers, voice hoarse as she works past the scratchy dryness of her throat. “Everything hurts. I lost a goddamn eye. And don’t give me any of that ‘you’re lucky to be alive’ crap,” she adds when she sees him opening his mouth. “I know that. Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna bitch about being in pain.”

His lips twitch upwards, the closest Gabriel ever comes to smiling these days. “I was going to ask if you wanted some water,” he says, showing her the glass in his other hand. “That’s all.”

Ana snorts softly, but nods. Gabriel slips his hand from her cheek to under the back of her head, bringing her up so he can feed her tiny sips of water, until the cup is empty and her throat doesn’t feel so much like sandpaper. “Did… Did she get away?” she forces herself to ask, even though the answer feels obvious.

Gabriel sighs, setting the empty cup to the side. “Yes. We have no idea of her current whereabouts.”

Ana laughs hollowly. “Some sniper I turned out to be,” she mutters, voice bitter, laced with regret and frustration at her own incompetence. “Couldn’t even shoot my target.”

“You hesitated because you didn’t want to shoot someone you knew,” Gabriel corrects her. “Anyone else would have done the same.”

Ana shakes her head. “Not you,” she whispers. “You wouldn’t have hesitated. Not for moment. You would have done exactly what needed to be done.” That’s why Jack gave Gabriel command of Blackwatch; because he could make the hard decisions they couldn’t.

This time Gabriel laughs, just as hollow and even more bitter. “Probably,” he agrees. “But that’s why everyone hates me now, remember? I’m a heartless bastard with no regard for anyone but myself.”

Ana flinches, the memory of the horrible insult Jack hurled at Gabriel for trying to insist that there was something wrong with Amelie when they first found her after her kidnapping making her heart seize inside her chest. It hurts even more to realize now just how right Gabriel was, and how when they found Gerard murdered and Amelie gone once again, Jack blamed Gabriel for not having been vocal enough. “He didn’t mean it,” she tries to insist.

Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “He meant every word,” he growls.

“He still cares about you, Gabriel.” He still loves you, she doesn’t say, because Gabriel won’t hear of it.

“Well he has a real fucking funny way of showing it.”

Ana sighs, too tired to argue. “I suppose now it’s my turn to be yelled at by our beloved Commander,” she muses, not looking forward to the debriefing. Jack will be easier on her than Gabriel, but he’ll also be disappointed, and that hurts more than his anger.

Gabriel shifts, brow furrowing deeply, bottom lip catching between his teeth for just a moment before he lets it go. Ana raises an eyebrow. “What?” she asks. “Gabriel, what have you done?”

“Nothing, yet,” Gabriel answers. “Not really.”

“Not really?” Ana frowns, glaring at him. “Gabriel. What the hell did you do?”

Gabriel sighs, gaze shifting to the side. Not being able to look her in the eye doesn’t bode well, and Ana’s stomach begins twisting into knots as she braces herself for his admission. “When Blackwatch was called in to clean up after the botched mission, I found you first. And I…  declared you missing in action,” he explains. “And brought you here, to heal. It’s only been a few days. The declaration can easily be reversed. And I’ll take the fallout, if Jack figures out I lied.”

“What?” Her frown deepens. “What the hell do you mean? Why would you declare me missing in action?”

He sighs again, more deeply this time, hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I… wanted to give you an out,” he admits after several tense moments of silence. “A chance to leave, and maybe find some peace.”

Ana opens her mouth, about to demand why he would ever consider such a ridiculous idea, but a spasm of pain hits her before she can speak. She clenches her jaw, but a whimper escapes anyway, and Gabriel’s hand comes back up to her cheek. She breathes heavily as the spasm passes, the moments of quiet it gives allowing her enough time to comprehend the lunacy behind Gabriel’s actions.

“You think Overwatch is going to fall,” she says darkly, glaring at him. He shifts uncomfortably, but doesn’t break her gaze. “And you want me to leave before it does.”

“I’m giving you the option to leave,” Gabriel corrects quietly. “It’s up to you whether or not you take it. But you’ve been fighting this fight for years,  _ querida _ . You deserve to to find some quiet, and be at ease.”

Ana clenches her jaw. “You don’t know what’s going to happen,” she insists, though everything Overwatch has suffered through over the past few years tells her otherwise. “Things could change. They could get—”

“They’re not going to get better,” Gabriel cuts her off, voice heavy, eyes dark with emotions Ana doesn’t want to name. “None of this is going to get any better, every mess, every fire, every goddamn fight I have with Jack—it’s just going to get worse and worse until something breaks.” He makes a frustrated noise, removing his hand from her cheek to drag it over his face. “But I can’t leave. I’m stuck in this fucking quagmire until it goes straight to hell. You aren’t.”

He’s not wrong. Her new status as MIA presents Ana with a wholly unique opportunity to leave Overwatch, an option she could never have taken otherwise, both because of her position as second-in-command and her own guilty conscience at abandoning the organization she’s fought so hard to see succeed. That same guilt tickles at the back of his mind now. But here in the sparse hospital room, with the heavy knowledge that she failed to protect her unit, and failed to neutralize a threat that will surely haunt Overwatch for years to come, it becomes dampened.

She looks at Gabriel, at the bags under his eyes, the wrinkles on his face from his near constant frowning, the downward turn of his mouth, the haunted look that never leaves his gaze. She sees a man worn down by years of war, carrying the weight of a thousand secrets and a thousand deaths on his shoulders, more than any person should have to endure in a single lifetime. Ana sees herself, and she sees the truth.

Ana is tired. She’s old, and she’s weary, and now, after such a wretched failure, the fight has left her. That she’s even considering Gabriel proposal tells her as much.

She reaches out for him. “ _ Malak _ ,” she says, and he takes her hands as if commanded. He brings both of them up, pressing soft kisses on the backs of her fingers. The gesture makes her heart scream in pain. Silence hangs between them for a long while before Ana finally speaks. “You could come with me,” she suggests. “You’re good at hiding, at going undercover. I’m sure you could disappear, if you wanted to.”

Gabriel makes a sound that might have been laughter were it not so bitter, so full of anger. “You know I can’t,” he says, and Ana does, even if she wants to pretend otherwise. “They’d hunt me down. Jack would chase me to the ends of the earth if I left.” Pain and regret flash across his face. “They’ll never let me go now. They probably wouldn’t let you go either, if they didn’t think you were dead.” He sighs deeply, and Ana can almost see the darkness he carries settling over him. “Honestly? I should have left Overwatch when I had the chance. I don’t know why I stayed.”

But he does, and so does Ana. Gabriel stayed because as much as he hated the bureaucracy and the politics, he loved Jack. He stayed because when he tried to leave, so many years ago now, Jack begged him to stay.  _ I can’t do this without him, Ana _ , he said to her, blue eyes wide with panic and fear like she’d never seen before or since, the prospect of Gabriel leaving him worse than any battle or injury.  _ I need him. I need him here with me. I can’t—He can’t leave, I can’t do this alone. I love him. I’ll be lost without him. _

And Gabriel stays now because as much hate and anger and vitriol he and Jack spew at each other, Gabriel loves him still. He loves Ana too, and she marvels often that he managed to find room in his heart for two. But he loved Jack first, and that love traps him, wrapping its tendrils around his heart and keeping him anchored to Jack no matter how toxic things become. Gabriel stays because he’s determined to see their fates through to the bitter end, even if he kills himself in the process.

He stays because Gabriel is an unstoppable force, and Jack is his immovable object, and they’ve been on a collision course for too long now to be able to stop. What Gabriel offers isn’t a chance for Ana to be at peace so much as a chance for Ana to escape, to flee from the field before she gets trapped in the crossfire. He doesn’t want her to be there when Overwatch falls into chaos and ruin, and if Ana’s honest with herself, she doesn’t want to be there either.

“What about Fareeha?” Ana asks, breaking a long silence. “It will crush her to think that I’m gone.”

“She’s your daughter. She’ll mourn, but she’ll survive. She’s strong.” Ana frowns, and Gabriel adds, “If you wanted to give her a message, I could pass it on.” His lips twitch into analmost smile. “I think I owe both of you that much.”

Ana hums thoughtfully, turning her head to stare out the window, though with her right eye bandaged as it is, she can’t see much. The prospect of leaving her daughter fills her with pain, but Gabriel’s words ring true; Fareeha will mourn, but she’d always been prepared for the possibility that Ana might not return someday, and she will survive. And she will continue to make Ana proud, whether Ana is believed dead or not.

“Let me think about it?” she asks finally.

“I can give you an hour,” Gabriel answers. “Then I have to have an answer.”

Ana sighs, closing her eyes. “Fine,” she says. “Can you give me some space?”

Gabriel doesn’t speak, but presses a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth. “I’ll be back,” he murmurs, the bed shifting as he rises. The soft click of the door closing rings loudly throughout the quiet room.

She sighs again, more deeply this time, and directs her gaze to the ceiling. She takes note of all the injuries littering her body; her lost eye, some broken ribs, multiple bruises, cuts and scrapes. They hurt, little spasms and throbs and bolts of pain. It’s nothing compared to the weariness she feels settling into her bones, or the heaviness that weighs down her soul. So many lives taken, so many lives lost, and for what? Overwatch will crumble anyway, likely undone by the very men who started it. Ana can scream and shout and plead all she wants; she won’t be able to prevent it.

When Gabriel returns an hour later, Ana has her answer.

He walks to stand at the edge of her bed, looking down at her expectantly, his dark brown eyes clear of the concern they held earlier, replaced by the careful hardened visage of Blackwatch Commander Reyes. Ana swats him with her arm, ignoring the pain it sends racing through her shoulder. “Stop that,” she orders.

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like I’m already dead.”

Gabriel snorts softly, shaking his head, but his expression softens appropriately, and Ana feels less like she’s talking to a stone. “Well?” he asks.

She sighs heavily, the weight of her answer already pressing down upon her, even if she believes she’s making the right decision. When she speaks, she does so slowly, words picked carefully. “I think… that Ana Amari was killed in action.”

Gabriel stiffens. “Are you certain?” he asks.

“Yes,” Ana says after a pause. “I think… I think that will be for the best.” She’ll never have another opportunity like this, and Ana is so very, very tired.

For a moment, Gabriel says nothing. Then he nods curtly. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll see that it’s done.”

He turns to leave, making Ana roll her eye. “Gabriel, come here,” she commands.

He pauses, and she doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s frowning. “I don’t—”

“That wasn’t a request. Come. Here.”

He turns back. Ana pats the space next to her on the bed, and after a moment, he obeys, sitting down carefully next to her. She reaches one arm up, and he follows until their foreheads are resting together and Ana can cup his face in one hand. She takes a deep breath, trying to imprint the smell of his tobacco firmly into her memory.

“I know you’re angry,  _ malak _ ,” she says softly. “And I know you think Jack hates you, and I know you think the world doesn’t have a place for you anymore, but I also want you to know that despite everything, you’re still a good man.” She brushes her thumb over his cheek. “Please— _ Please _ . Remember that. For me.”

He closes his eyes, the only way he can’t look at her when they’re this close. “I’ll try,” he answers, and Ana supposes that’s all she can hope for.

“I love you,” she whispers, because she does, with all her heart, and it’s the last time she’ll ever be able to tell him. She doesn’t expect him to answer, because these days emotions and Gabriel mix like water and oil, but he lets out a heavy exhale and moves to kiss her, soft and sweet and full of things that make Ana’s heart crumple inside her chest.

“I love you too,” he murmurs against the corner of her mouth. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more.”

Ana isn’t. She’s only sorry he couldn’t be happy.


End file.
